Political Values and Religious Cultures: Jews, Catholics, and Protestants (Michael Parenti)
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Political Values and Religious Cultures: Jews, Catholics, and Protestants | |
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| Author | Michael Parenti |
| Publisher | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion |
| First published | 1967 |
| Source | https://www.jstor.org/stable/1384052 |
Political Values and Religious Cultures: Jews, Catholics, and Protestants is an article by Michael Parenti, published in Autumn 1967 in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. It is a revised version of a paper presented at the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion's annual meeting on 29 October 1965. Some of the language within the article which would be considered outdated by today's standards has been changed.
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Instances of political behaviour which bear no rational relationship to maximising a group's material and social self-interest may be explained as responses to subcultural factors. Religious groups in America, despite their generally high level of acculturation, still retain ethical and belief systems which influence basic conservative-liberal political orientations. The criteria used to distinguish sect from church seem to be of less importance in shaping political predispositions than beliefs centring around revealed dogma, salvation, impulse life, intellectualism vs. faith, and the nature of evil. The cultural belief systems of the various denominations operate as independent variables within the social structure.
The literature on pressure groups and voting behaviour demonstrates that American politics are, for the most part, "rational." That is to say: group attitudes and actions are generally directed towards promoting some kind of substantive measure which the group deems beneficial to its interests. Thus we can observe party-class voting correlations, union support of the closed shop, business opposition to certain state regulations, rural opposition to reapportionment, Black support of civil rights, Catholic support of parochial school aid, et cetera. The objective position an individual or group occupies in the social structure, and the material conditions operating therein, determine much about individual or group perceptions and evaluations of life, including political life.
Corresponding to the above definition of "rational," "irrational" political behaviour would be that kind of action or attitude which is intended to minimise rather than maximise socio-economic self interest (for instance, unions opposing the closed shop and Blacks supporting an inferior status for themselves). Are there such instances of political behaviour, and if so, how might they be explained?
In the Wilson and Banfield study[1] of twenty referenda elections for bond issues to pay for public services such as hospitals, schools, and parks, it was found that the groups which because of their income level would pay little or nothing at all and yet benefit most from the services were also the groups which were most opposed to such services. These were the Poles, Czechs, Italians, Irish, and other Catholic ethnic groups. Conversely, upper income white Protestants and Jews, the very groups that would be paying the costs while benefitting the least, were the strongest supporters of the proposed expenditures. (The only group acting according to rational self interest were the low-income Blacks, who were supporters of public services.) The correlations were too compelling to assume that the voters of all groups were acting out of ignorance of their actual material interests; such ignorance would have produced more random results. It might be that upper-income groups place less value on the dollar or are better schooled civically, but these appear to be, at best, only partial explanations. More likely, the authors conclude, the WASP and Jewish subcultures tend "to be more public-regarding and less private-(self or family) regarding" than are the Catholic ethnic subcultural groups.[2]
While no delineation of these cultural ingredients was attempted by Wilson and banfield, their findings do lead us directly to Max Weber's consideration of culture as a force operating independently of the objective or material factors, an understanding Weber submitted not to confound but to complement the usually recognised materialist interpretations of casuality.[3] According to Weber, different social groups possess some kind of "style of life" and operate under the influence of distinct, albeit sometimes implicit, moral ideas, among which are those associated (or originally associated) with religion. These ideas or values, while frequently a response to the material conditions, are also often the product of other ideas which persist in the face of drastically changing material conditions.[4] Ideas, for Weber, are also an expression of human aspirations and longings that seem to transcend a particular material environment, frequently in response to some deep-seated spiritual challenge.[5] Religious belief systems possess both the inspirational and the durable traditional qualities and through much of history have played a key role in the determination of moral and normative codes. While not all religions afford guidance on the many particulars of secular life (some are relatively indifferent to certain economic and political questions), the belief systems of all do provide principles and assumptions that shape many of the basic orientations towards worldly activity.
Herein, I shall attempt to trace the religio-political value derivatives of the major American denominations. Despite the allegedly growing "Americanisation," "homogenisation," and secularisation of religions in this society,[6] there exists significant differences in the ideational content of sectarian systems, especially in regards to beliefs about man's nature, his redemption, and his commitments to the temporal world. These beliefs may produce, or help explain, political orientations that cannot readily be explained as manifestations of rational material self-interest.
The following discussion is to be considered suggestive rather than exhaustive in its scope. At no time is it being contended that socio-economic interests are of no importance for the shaping of group political attitudes. Nor is it to be assumed that there may not be normative persuasions other than those of a religious origin that lead to responses counter to rational self-interest (e.g., some of those propagated in the name of "patriotism"). Our concern here, however, is with certain of the key components of religious subcultures.
Jewish Liberalism
Catholic Conservatism
Protestant Fundamentalism and Modernism
Conclusion
- ↑ James Q. Wilson and Edward C. Banfield, "Public Regardingness As a Value Premise in Voting Behavior," American Political Science Review, 58 (1964), 876–887. These elections were held in seven major cities between 1956 and 1963.
- ↑ Ibid., 882–885. Wilson's study of the Democratic reform movement in New York shows a similar division between liberal-activist-reformist Jews and WASPs on the one hand, and conservative, non-ideological, politically traditional Irish and Italian Democrats on the other. See James Q. Wilson, The Amateur Democrat, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).
- ↑ Weber's best known and probably most pertinent work on this question is The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958).
- ↑ For application of this proposition to the American scene, see Seymour Martin Lipset, The First New Nation (New York: Basic Books, 1963), especially the sections entitled "The Unchanging American Values and Their Connection with American Character" and "The Inadequacy of a Materialistic Interpretation of Change," pp. 110–129.
- ↑ See Reinhard Bendix's discussion of these points in Max Weber, an Intellectual Portrait (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1962), pp. 59ff. For a broader statement on the transcendent quest, see Benjamin Nelson, "The Future of Illusions," in Contemporary Civilization Staff, Columbia University (eds.), Man in Contemporary Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956), II, 958–976. I wish to acknowledge a personal debt to my former colleague, nelson, for much of my own interest in, and understanding of, Weber's work.
- ↑ Representation of the homogenisation theme may be found in Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, rev. ed. 1960); Martin E. Marty, Varieties of Unbelief (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1964). For a discussion of the theological and material factors that foster denominational consensus in America, see Talcott Parsons, "The Cultural Background of American Religious Organization" in Harlan Cleveland & Harold D. Lasswell, Ethics and Bigness, Scientific, Academic, Religious, Political and Military (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1962), p. 141–167.